(after 1539), and was formerly in the Dean and Chapter archives at Carlisle Cathedral. This garbled account is a less probable version than that in the Life, and sets the miracle in the days of St Bega herself. The Life manuscript contains accounts of nine miracles brought about by the influence of St Bega. They are earthy folk tales with miraculous interpretation. The first concerns a raider from Galloway in Scotland, who set out to steal a horse. His mother warned him against theft on the land of St Bega, but her son was scornful and moving his hands to the private parts of his buttocks he tauntingly said, "What can that little old woman do to me?" As he escaped on the horse, arrows were shot after him as he crouched low, and the inevitable happened. The third concerns Godard of Millom, whose men would not remove their horses from the monks' pasture to which they had strayed. When the men came to saddle the horses, they found the hooves almost severed, and in penance Godard gave the field to the Monks. The seventh miracle tells of three men of Workington, who were imprisoned in Egremont Castle for killing a man in a drunken brawl, but having confessed their sins to St Bega, were rescued by her and found sanctuary at St Bees. The ninth miracle tells of two sick brothers who, after seeing a vision at Tynemouth, travelled to St Bees in a cart, and were healed; leaving the cart as thanks. The register of St Bees Priory records several miracles by the power of prayer to St Bega. In 1310 "God worked many miracles by the prayers and merits of St Bega...to the edification of all the people with many eye-witnesses". In 1313, "A certain Irish boy received his sight in the chapel of St Bega through the merits and prayers of the said virgin, all the community seeing it". The cult The name of the village Kirkeby Becok used in the charters of St Bees Priory from the times of Henry II and Richard I, and the phraseology of the early charters indicates a pre-Norman church at St Bees dedicated to St Bega. At the granting of the first charter of the Benedictine priory one of the witnesses was Gillebecoc; meaning devotee of Beghoc, indicating a Bega cult already in existence. The writer of the Life